When I click on my model and turn on Co-Creator, it changes the main button from "Add to cart" to "Personalise". What if someone doesn't want to personalise? Can't they just buy it without personalisation?

When managing the co-creator, there is a check box (or was, last time I looked) for "required" fields. If none are required, they can just order the item without personalizing it. You will still have to manually upload it, and they will see your uploaded copy in their "my designs" to order (they cannot download it).

But this is exactly the problem. Why should both customer and seller (me) lose access to the much simpler "just buy it" option - just because I want to OFFER customisation - but not as the ONLY option!

Is there no way round this? If not, I'm going to have to turn co creator off because personalisation is just meant to be an extra, I don't want it to get in the way of buying normally.

Aquillyne, you seem to see this as an issue, I see it as an opportunity.

Basically you have two different models one plain and one customizable, the plain one can be made to be cheaper than the custom one. Cross reference the models, advertise the fact that you're happy to personalise the model for a small extra fee (all included in the model price)... and for the personalied model, you can advertise the fact there's a cheaper plain version. Double the exposure for the same basic model

At the end of the day though, its your model, and you're free to what you want with it.

stop4stuff, you have a neat idea but unfortunately minimalism is my overriding design philosophy and hence the model is already designed to be as cheap as possible (without compromising function, i.e. there is no waste) so I have no room to make it cheaper. I could make it arbitrarily more expensive, of course.

What you're trying to do is create a more pronounced differentiation between the two products to mitigate the obvious disadvantage of duplication. The problem is that this differentiation would be artificial, and ultimately I'd still be cluttering my store with 2 essentially identical products.

So for now I think I have to turn Co-Creator off but I hope Shapeways address this and make it possible to turn it on as an option only.

As I described, it is easy to order the item without personalization, but I completely understand where you are coming from because what you are looking for has been asked for before by several users including myself.

What we are looking for is a "hands-off" process for when the design doesn't need intervention. For example, having a drop-down menu of various ring sizes that correspond to separate files that have already been uploaded. That way the whole process would be automated and you only need to get involved when the person asks for something specific, like a monogram. The other snag that was mentioned is that each item can be only one price, whereas different options would logically cost different amounts.

When you start having multiple types of option, more dimensions of variables, it becomes a more complicated software issue, but the basic drop-down variation option seems fairly achievable. As long as Shapeways is doing all that work under the hood right know, I hope they are thinking ahead and working to support multiple model versions and prices within one item.

Yes, that is what I'm looking for, but I only sell things through Shapeways because no one visits my external websites except hackers and spammers that constantly drain my resources. I may be able to do it if I continue to spend more time coding than designing, but I am a designer, not a coder. I have invested literally hundreds of hours staring at text over the past year with absolutely zero results so I am done with that and will not be writing any more code. There are people who specialize in that and went to school for it and are getting paid right now to make it happen, so I am a little befuddled why it should be my responsibility.

There have been really great improvements lately, but I would really like to operate my Shapeways shop on Shapeways through a web interface.

I request a feature that supports multiple models/prices within one product listing, editable through the co-creator management system. This may not jive with how the database and querying system is set up right now, but, the interface could transparently hold many models under one listing. We should be able to upload sets of model parts that will automatically be joined into a single model depending on the options selected, thereby enabling nearly infinite possible variations, rather than simply running a script that orders many parts. Having each part as a model is not feasible because, as McTrivia found out, you will have to deface your own shop with hundreds of models to make it work. The feature I've requested is the first small step toward implementing real automated co-creation in a scalable, sensible way.

I totally understand, what you are asking for is on the road map for development, the more people as for it the further up the ranks it goes.. As with the improvements to full color and the introduction of CSV mass mark-up tool.